


Happy Anniversary

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Disabled Character, Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 03:23:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9859883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: When Niflheim invades, it isn't Luna that stays trapped in Tenebrae. The Prince of Lucis remains a prisoner to the Empire, with their best soldier as his only companion.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/156542819982/hello-i-dont-know-if-you-take-any-prompts-but) for an anonymous request.

He remembered that he couldn’t move. No matter how far he reached, no matter how loudly he screamed, his body didn’t obey him. He remembered the taste of the dirt as he fell from the chair, desperately clawing at the earth when his legs refused to carry him. He remembered his father’s voice, as loud as the gunfire, but getting further and further away. He remembered the high peals of Luna’s cries, he remembered Ravus’s pleas, and he remembered the horrible shadow of Glauca’s armor falling over him as he sobbed for his father to save him.

He remembered the same thing every year that time stole away from him. Somehow, he couldn’t remember past that. He’d spent so long trapped in Tenebrae that he’d forgotten what his father’s smile looked like. He’d forgotten the sound of Luna’s laughter as they skipped through the sylleblossom fields. He’d forgotten the friends he’d made in Insomnia, or whether he’d ever begun to make any in the first place. He’d forgotten everything beyond that single, terrible day.

“Are you awake, Prince Noctis?”

He couldn’t even remember what Ravus’s voice used to sound like when they were children. He didn’t remember if there had ever been any cheer in it, but he thought that there must have been. Once. In a fairytale. Noctis opened his eyes and turned his head, rolled along the back of the wheelchair. He wondered if Ravus had forgotten things, too. He wondered if he could remember a time where either of them smiled. Noctis often wondered what Ravus thought of him, remembered or not.

“The chancellor visited again,” Ravus reported into the silence.

“Did you tell him to shove whatever bullshit he’s trying to get me to buy?”

Ravus took the vulgarity like he always did. Stone-faced and unmoving. Noctis never knew if he agreed with his parlance or not. Even before Niflheim came, the little Noctis could remember of him was that Ravus had always prided himself on his manners. Of all things, he had a feeling that had never changed.

“He was here to check on the Crystal dampener.”

Noctis bit down on the rage his report summoned up. His heart blasted in his ears, his fingers clenching around the arms of the chair. A deliberate insult, that. On today of all days, the anniversary of his imprisonment, Ardyn decided to tighten the collar he was choking Noctis with. He turned his wheelchair away from Ravus, facing the suspended skyline of Tenebrae beyond the balcony instead.

He was so sick of this country. Its beauty and its mystique had long since curdled in his regard. He wanted the phantom city that haunted his dreams. He wanted to hold the swords he could just barely recall his father wielding to protect him. He wanted to plunge one through Ardyn’s chest, he wanted to march into the Emperor’s throne room and tack him to the back of the chair. He wanted to run, he just wanted to walk…

He wanted freedom. On today of all days. And Ardyn knew that.

Ravus appeared at his side, just as ghostly as the faces in Noctis’s memory. The edges of his vision were red with hate for the torments the Empire had inflicted on them both. And there was no small amount of envy towards Ravus in that hate, too. That he could walk, run, march wherever he wanted to, and yet, he stayed here. As unmoving as a statue as Noctis’s personal guard and a terrible one at that.

Where was he to guard Noctis from the twisted scientists that jammed needles into his arms with concocted curses that kept his legs from healing? Where was he to keep Ardyn or any of his other servants out of the dampening chamber so that Noctis could conjure a blade?

When Noctis wondered what Ravus thought of him, he wondered if he knew just how much he hated him. Or just how much he loved him. Because for all of his failings, he was all Noctis had. The only person in all of Tenebrae who saw what he saw that day, suffered what he’d suffered in losing his only family to the smoke and the flames. He wondered if he hated the Empire as much as he did, if he dreamed the same vengeful dreams that he did. He wondered how he would ever know, when he kept his walls so heavily fortified against him.

“Was that all you came to tell me?” Noctis asked him, glaring out at Tenebrae and trying so hard not to just scream at it all because he could do nothing else to it.

Ravus was silent for a long moment. Something Noctis had gotten used to. It took the man a while to compile his thoughts together, and then, an even longer while to decide whether or not he wanted to express them. The Empire discouraged thoughtless expression.

“I went to speak with my mother,” he eventually said, voice dry and quiet.

Noctis didn’t say anything. Ravus spent much of his time in the cemeteries of Tenebrae, a pastime Noctis had always found troubling. He supposed it was a more traditional way of grieving, rather than just being angry all the time. He couldn’t debate the man on how to properly deal with his emotions when Noctis was hardly in a healthy mentality himself.

“Did she offer you any council?” Noctis asked, bitterly.

“Little,” Ravus admitted.

“Why bother bringing it up then?”

He felt Ravus look down at him and Noctis knew he wasn’t being fair to him by snapping. But he couldn’t help it. He wondered if Ravus knew that when he turned Noctis’s wheelchair and knelt down in front of him. It was a gesture that had become as unconscious as breathing. When he wanted to talk, _really_ talk, he came down to Noctis’s level. It was a signal of respect between the two of them that pushed away the barrier between guard and prince. It transformed the two of them into what they truly were. Prisoners.

“This is the first year you haven’t shed any tears for them,” Ravus noted, brushing a thumb along his cheek.

“Fresh out.”

Ravus looked at him, in that deep, knowing way that only Noctis could understand. He turned his face into his palm and kissed it, an apology for his earlier terseness and a need for him to stay. To be on his side. Today of all days.

“I don’t want to cry anymore,” he said, anger whispering beneath the words. “I just want to go home.”

“I know.”

There was a profound sadness to his silvery stare. Another thing that Noctis often forgot. Tenebrae had stopped being Ravus’s home once Sylva died and Luna fled, but beyond it, he was homeless. He belonged to nowhere and Noctis thought that must be so much worse than knowing where you belonged and being kept from it.

He wrapped his fingers around the hand against his face and leaned forward to kiss him. It was all that kept either of them from going completely mad. Kisses. Touches. The simplest forms of contact to remind them that they were both human, that they were in this together, and that they were all either of them had in this captive life. Noctis leaned his forehead against his, and he asked Ravus the same thing he did every year on this dark anniversary.

“How do we get out of here, Ravus?”

And all Ravus could ever do was thread his fingers along the back of Noctis’s head, pressing his face closer to his own, and give him the same damn answer.

“I don’t know.”


End file.
